His behavior ''has contributed to my inability to have a lasting relationship with a man,'' says the Orlando woman, who requested anonymity.

Her father was a man who ''had this idea of what his children should be. If we didn't fit in his molds, we weren't valuable,'' she says.

As a result of her inability to please Dad, ''I've spent a lot of my time with men trying to get their approval because I didn't get it from my father.''

Her need for men's approval manifested itself as clinginess, especially in her younger years, she says.

''I only felt validated when they wanted to spend time with me and give up the rest of their life to be with me'' - behavior that just drove men away, she now recognizes.

Candy gets bravos for her self-awareness from counselors and authors who in the last few years have turned the therapeutic spotlight on the father-daughter relationship.

''Daughters learn from fathers what men are,'' says Karen Turner, a Winter Park mental health counselor. ''Depending on your father, men are competent, kind, angry'' - or even abusive.

Indeed, women base their adult expectations of men on what they got from Dad, most therapists agree. That's why women who were abused by their fathers often marry men who abuse them.

For good or ill, women also draw their self-image largely from Dad's reaction to them.

''We learn from our fathers how men see women. We see ourselves through our fathers' eyes,'' she says.

Interest in the father-daughter relationship has developed partly in response to the men's movement.

''Women resonated to the idea of 'father hunger' as they became aware of the writing of Robert Bly and Sam Keen,'' says Joan Minninger, a California psychotherapist and author of The Father-Daughter Dance.

Both Bly, author of Iron John, and Keen, who wrote Fire in the Belly, have bemoaned the absence of a close father-son relationship in so many men's lives.

Meanwhile, as marriages have continued to disintegrate and the number of children born to unwed moms has skyrocketed, sociologists and child-development specialists have gotten into the act.

Their research has documented the importance of male role models not only to boys but to girls as well.

Especially dramatic has been the link found between eating disorders - such as bingeing and purging - and unhappy father-daughter relationships.

''Fathers play a particularly special role in their daughter's passage from childhood to adolescence,'' writes Connecticut psychologist Margo Maine in Father Hunger.

''Girls need to be 'courted' by their fathers, in a non-seductive way, to move from being girls to becoming young women. They want to feel attractive, womanly, and acceptable to the most important men in their lives (their fathers),'' Maine writes.

''When this acceptance does not occur . . . they may act out their distress in different ways - by withdrawing from social contact, by being promiscuous, or by the self-loathing and rejection of self that is expressed through an eating disorder.''

Of course, bulimia and anorexia are extreme examples of the damage unhealthy father-daughter relationships can inflict. Often, the results are more subtle.

In The Father-Daughter Dance, Minninger and co-author Barbara Goulter examine six archetypal father-daughter relationships and use characters from legend, fiction, history and popular culture to illustrate them.

For example, ''the pampering father and his spoiled daughter'' are exemplified by ''Black Jack'' Bouvier and his daughter, Jackie.

''Black Jack had the reputation of being one of the great womanizers of his day,'' Minninger and Goulter write. ''Jackie looked like him, had been named for him, and was treated like a favorite child.''

After her parents' divorce, the authors write, ''she would boast excitedly about her father's many sexual adventures and scoff at her mother's distress over his infidelity.''

It was no surprise, then, that Jackie was instantly attracted to John F. Kennedy - womanizer extraordinaire.

''She was aware of his reputation for philandering but that may have been part of the appeal,'' Maine and Goulter write. ''Generalizing from her father's behavior, Jackie openly stated to friends that all men are unfaithful.''

The father-daughter relationship is so powerful that, even when women consciously seek men who are different from dear old Dad, their unconscious will lead them to men who turn out to be similar, says Turner, the Winter Park therapist.

But let's not get carried away with dumping all the dirt at Dad's feet, some therapists say.